1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for learning Chinese character script and Chinese-based Character script for other languages, for example, written Japanese, Classical Korean, and Classical Vietnamese.
2. Summary of the Invention
The present invention provides a method for learning the scripts of Chinese character-based languages, for example, Japanese and Korean, which overcomes disadvantages of previously known methods and provides an easier way to learn written languages having many characters, such as the thousands of written Chinese characters, some of which being relatively complex.
A Key-Symbol System described herein is a mnemonic, step-wise process for learning the character-based scripts of numerous languages. For example, the Key-Symbol System can be used to learn the written Chinese language. These scripts include those of Mandarin and other Chinese languages such as Fu, Cantonese, Amoy Hokkien, Taiwanese, among many others—both in the classic and simplified forms. These languages/dialects have many alternate forms, abbreviations, dialectic characters, and redundant or archaic characters that are learned easily through the Key-Symbol System. Lexicographers, multi-linguists, philologists, and students can appreciate the learning techniques of the Key-Symbol System.
The Key-Symbol System also can be used to cover the character scripts of Japanese and Korean, even though these two languages have a secondary phonetic syllabary or alphabet, respectively.
The Key-Symbol System could also be used by other Asian languages and cultures that use similar or identical characters for official, decorative, or other purposes. Some of these cultures include those of Thailand, Viet Nam, Singapore, and expatriate communities worldwide.
Names for characters in some of the exemplary languages that can apply the Key-Symbol System are Han-dz (Chinese), Kanji (Japanese), Hanja (Korean), and Chu Nom (Vietnamese).
To prevent redundancy in the description herein, Chinese will be used as the exemplary language for applying the Key-Symbol system to character-based writing systems.
For the purpose of explaining the Key-Symbol System, the following vocabulary will apply:    Character: The equivalent of a written word in English. A Character is a complete written Chinese word.            The Character , pronounced mee in the second tone, means “to be lost” and is a complete written Chinese word.            Symbol: A part of a Character, roughly equivalent to a single letter in English. Just as the letters “d” and “o” make up the word “do,” the symbols  and  together, form the character  pronounced “mee” and having the meaning “to be lost.” Symbols combine to form complete Chinese words just as letters combine to form English words. For purposes of the present invention, the term Symbol includes what standard grammar texts refer to as radicals [“roots”] and non-radical elements. Radicals follow a standard numbering configuration in all textbooks and are used to classify all Characters.
The Key-Symbol System uses a memory association technique for making complex Characters easier to remember by taking advantage of the fact that such Characters are composed of combinations of other, more basic and easily recognizable Characters already known by a user, herein referred to as a student.
Simply put, the student begins learning some basic Chinese Characters. For example, the Symbol for the word “step” is  and the Symbol for the word “rice” is .
After a subset of basic Symbols and Characters is known, the student begins recognizing combinations of these basic Symbols and Characters in more complex Characters, the latter of which having a different meaning than the basic Symbols or Characters when such Symbols or Characters are read separately. Because there are thousands of Characters in the Chinese written language, it would be beneficial to provide the student with a memory tool or system that allows him/her to jog his/her memory for obtaining the meaning of the complex Character. The Key-Symbol System provides such benefits by applying a process of breaking down the complex Character and associating English words to each portion of the Character that, when remembered by the student, allows the student to reconstitute the complex Character from the combination of simpler Characters.
In particular, the Key-Symbol System separates complex Characters into their constituent parts (Symbols and/or Characters) referred to herein as Symbols. These Symbols have particular meanings, already known to the student, because they are in a subset of his/her learned Characters. A Key is formed from the Symbol to be the English definition of the Symbol. For example, if the Symbol  has the meaning “step”, then the Key for that basic Character is the English word “step.” The Key-Symbol System of the present invention is not limited to English. This System can be applied to any Latin alphabet-based language such as Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, or German, or to transliterations of non-Latin alphabets such as Russian, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, etc.
A particular example parses the complex Character  having the meaning “to get lost.” This two-part complex character includes two Symbols, the first Symbol  is for the word “step” and the second Symbol  is for the word “rice.” Thus, the Keys for the symbol for the verb “to get lost” are the English words “step” and “rice.”
Next, each Key is broken down by defining its first two letters as a Bridge. Here, “r” and “i” and “s” and “t”, respectfully, form the Bridges “RI” and “ST.”
To facilitate the visual impression, the Bridge is typed or hand printed in bold, underlined upper-case letters (which can also be red in color if the student desires). The remainder of the Bridge is typed or handwritten in unbolded, black non-underlined lower-case letters. For example RIce, STep. Therefore, to remember the complex Character  for the verb “to get lost,” the student knows that he/she needs to remember a catch-phrase, or mnemonic, having the two Bridges “ST” and “RI.” In the English language, there are many words containing the Bridges “ST” and “RI.” Some words begin with one of these Bridges, and some words contain one of these bridges in the interior. For example, the words “riot” and “crisis” each contain the Bridge “RI” and the words “storm” and “arrest” each contain the Bridge “ST.” To apply the Key-Symbol System, the student defines the mnemonic Memory Jogger “STorm RIot” or the mnemonic Memory Jogging Sentence “Swept up in the STorm of a RIot” for the complex Character  having the meaning “to get lost.” It is noted that the only upper-case letters in a Memory Jogger Sentences are those which form parts of Bridges. All other letters are lower-case even if they are the first letter of a proper noun, the first letter of a sentence, or are customarily upper-case such as “I” or “USA”.
Now that the student has the mnemonic associated with the Character for “to get lost,” all that the student needs to do to write the complex Character is to recall and deconstruct the mnemonic. The student, then, determines the Bridges “ST” and “RI” from the mnemonic. The student knows that the bridge “ST” always carries the Key “step” and that the bridge “RI” always carries the Key “rice.” Because the student already knows the simple Chinese Characters  and  for the words “step” and “rice,” respectively, the student merely writes down these two Characters next to one another and, therefore, has written the complex Character  having, as its meaning, “to get lost.”
The Key-Symbol System can be applied to any complex Chinese Character and further examples can be appreciated without describing them herein.
With variations in single Characters, the Key-Symbol System can be expanded to address these and other concerns using a Source-Icon System. The Source Icon System allows the differentiation of three variations of a single character , such as . Each of the three variations has the same strokes, but one additional horizontal stroke intersects at different points on the first Character.
The Key-Symbol System selects an English word (the Key) and its Bridge (the abbreviation of the Key) and joins them to a given Character to form a trio. In the Source-Icon System, the Symbol of the Trio is considered as a “Source” for other symbols that resemble it or that, in some way, form a pattern with the Symbol. These other symbols are referred to as “Icons” of the Source. The Source-Icon System modifies the Bridge by taking advantage of the upper- and lower-case forms of each of the two letters within the Bridge. Binary logic of upper and lower case letters provides four possible configurations for a two-letter Bridge. Using the Bridge “ST”, for example, provides the following four possibilities: “ST”, “St”, “st”, and “sT”. The Source-Icon takes advantage of this definite set to associate the single Source from the three possible Icons associated with that Source.
Other features that are considered as characteristic for the invention are set forth in the appended claims.
Although the invention is illustrated and described herein as embodied in a method for learning character-based languages, it is, nevertheless, not intended to be limited to the details shown because various modifications and structural changes may be made therein without departing from the spirit of the invention and within the scope and range of equivalents of the claims.
The construction and method of operation of the invention, however, together with additional objects and advantages thereof, will be best understood from the following description of specific embodiments when read in connection with the accompanying drawings.